Upholding People's Rights under the Constitution

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Reflection on the government’s motivation in relation to hiding the facts (3)

The FOI Commissioner, Mr Timothy Pilgrim
wrote in his decision:

“In the context of this IC review, I
believe the disclosure of the information will assist to inform the community
of how government operates. In particular, I believe it will assist the
community in understanding that their correspondence or submissions to the Office
of the Prime Minister may not always be brought to the personal attention of
the Prime Minister.”

Why
did the staff refuse to disclose that the Prime Minister did not read my letter
personally?

I requested:

“Who decided not to inform [the Prime Minister]
about the matter and what policies were applied, if [the Prime Minister] has
not been informed,

“Who decided not to take any action and
what the decision maker’s grounds were, if [the Prime Minister] has not done so”

If they told me the Prime Minister did not
read my letter personally, they had to answer the question “who decided not to
inform [the Prime Minister] about the matter and what policies were applied”.

As the exempted information might contain
relevant information, I had to focus on the proceedings to release the exempt
information. During the deliberately delayed review process, many years passed
and both then Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have all quitted
politics.

Apparently the staff played with the FOI
review proceedings.

Particularly, in the original draft of the
letter wrote by Senior Adviser Brendan MacDowell of the Legal Policy Branch of
the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to me on 17 July 2009 exactly
mentioned the guideline and my letter was not brought to the attention of the
Prime Minister personally. The original paragraph was:

“Finally, I note that, as you have been
advised previously, in addition to all of the other duties performed by the
Prime Minister, it is not possible for him to handle and individually respond
to the very large volume of correspondence received. Guidelines in place for
dealing with correspondence provide for circumstances in which others,
including departmental officers and the Prime Minister’s advisers, may respond
to correspondence on behalf of the Prime Minister. It is my understanding that
the matters raised in your various letters to the Prime Minister have not been
brought to the attention of the Prime Minister personally.”

According to the instruction of Mathew
Jose, Senior Adviser of the office of the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the
above paragraph was replaced by the paragraph below:

“If you do not specify documents you wish
to access by 31 July 2009, we will assume you do not wish to proceed and we will
treat the matter as finalised.”

In his draft of the letter to me Brendan
MacDowell naturally assumed: “that the matter raised in your various letters to
the Prime Minister have not been brought to the attention of the Prime Minister
personally”. Mathew Jose did not want me to know that. He wrote in the released
document 1: “I’m comfortable with the language in the paragraph, except the
last sentence”. So Brendan MacDowell replied: “I’ll delete the whole paragraph”
as he understood Mathew Jose’s worry was: “it’s unlikely he will now take the
point when he appears not to have in the past”.

Apparently, they worried that if they told
me that the matter I rose was not brought to the attention of the Prime
Minister personally, I would send another letter or try to find another way
letting the Prime Minister read the letter. So they played a trick with me.